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Saturday, 13 October 2012

Only paint completed (sub-)assemblies

As a kid, I built every model in the same order :

Paint everything while it's still attached to the sprue

Glue everything together

Apply decals

Some building instructions suggest pre-painting all parts on the sprue, and that is what I always did. While this has its advantage of easy access to all nooks and crannies and it gives you something to hold, disadvantages are :

after removing sprue attachment points, you'll need to touch up the paint

paint will cover areas where glue needs to be applied

From past experience, gluing (small) parts on top of an already painted surface yields bad results. Scraping paint off a flat surface to attach an antenna or some other detail isn't always possible. Many of my older models (see : Attic) had parts (wingflaps, landing gear doors, antennas, ...) fallen off, because they were glued on top of gloss paint and the bond didn't hold. Had I glued BEFORE painting, the bond would probably have been strong enough to survive long-term storage.

So, what I do now, is try to finish construction as completely as possible before starting to paint (example), yielding the best possible bonding between all parts.

Complex shapes call for painting of sub-assemblies, where painting the completed model would be difficult.

Above are the sub-assemblies for the saucer and drive section of the Enterprise. I think its pretty obvious that gluing them together will make it more difficult to paint certain areas.

I haven't assembled the engine nacelles yet, since they contain clear parts that need to be painted on the inside. (obviously one of the exceptions to my assemble-before-painting rule).